


Upside-Down

by eluna



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Confused Jack Kline, Depression, Emotionally Hurt Jack Kline, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied Castiel/Dean Winchester, Implied Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Implied Relationships, Loneliness, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Evil Jack Kline, POV Jack Kline, Post-Episode: s13e05 Advanced Thanatology, Season/Series 13, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 17:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12709530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: Now, the way Castiel towers above Jack at the top of the staircase that leads down to the Winchester bunker, one corner of his mouth curved up and the other curved down, eyes narrowed, head tilted to the side, half-words on his tongue—Jack thought Castiel would have answers for him, but all he’s giving Jack is this upside-down feeling he has on the inside every time Castiel looks at him like that, like Jack is some kind of—of riddle, or spectacle.





	Upside-Down

**Author's Note:**

> I _never_ write things like this that'll get invalidated as soon as canon continues shortly thereafter, and this is also probably terrible because I wrote it while half-delirious on sleep medication, but my mental illnesses have been acting up this week and this point in the season seemed like a good opportunity for me to work through some old trauma and feelings. Sorry if it sucks! I'll maybe edit this up a little when I'm feeling more conscious and have the time, and I _am_ making good progress on that promised sequel to Fell on Black Days; it's just coming along slowly because it's turning out much longer than expected.

When Jack and Castiel meet properly for the first time—his _father_ , Castiel, miraculously alive for some reason that Jack can’t quite be sure is his own doing no matter how hard Sam questions him about it—it all goes wrong, somehow. Jack remembers being born, remembers feeling so sure that Castiel would be there, waiting, to smile knowingly, embrace him, and teach Jack everything he needed to know with warmth in his hands—but there had only been Sam, frowning, and Dean, firing, and the admonition that _bad things_ had happened and would happen still because of him. Now, the way Castiel towers above Jack at the top of the staircase that leads down to the Winchester bunker, one corner of his mouth curved up and the other curved down, eyes narrowed, head tilted to the side, half-words on his tongue—Jack thought Castiel would have answers for him, but all he’s giving Jack is this _upside-down_ feeling he has on the inside every time Castiel looks at him like that, like Jack is some kind of—of riddle, or spectacle.

They do embrace, there in the middle of the room after Castiel haltingly descends the stairs and then _stares_ at him until Jack inches forward to meet him, but it doesn’t happen the way Jack imagined it. Mostly, it feels forced, both of them standing there stiffly with their arms noodling around each other’s backs until Jack can’t stand another second of it and pulls free. It doesn’t give him any of the sensations of _belonging_ or _love_ that his mother whispered about in the long nights before Jack’s birth. He thought _love_ was the feeling that he felt for his father and mother before his birth, but everything is so much more confusing here on the outside, and the memory of how he felt inside his mother keeps slipping away, enshrouded by these new and sadder things that wash over him now when he thinks about his mother or looks at Castiel or steps into Sam’s or Dean’s presence. The books Sam lets Jack read identify those sensations as _hurt_ and _lonely_ and _guilty_ , and Jack doesn’t know if he likes how it feels to love very much, now that he knows what shades love brings alongside itself.

He wonders whether anyone besides himself ever feels the most like _lonely_ when they’re in the company of other people. The idea seems illogical, counterintuitive, to Jack, and he supposes that he must be the only one who ever feels this way in these circumstances—that everybody else has already been alive for enough days to learn how silly that sounds and adjust how they feel accordingly. He wonders, too, how many days it’s supposed to take to learn how to feel the right feelings. Jack can’t ever forget how far behind he is, how _naïve_ he is, compared to Sam and Dean. He doubts he’ll ever catch up enough to become as wise or brave or big as Sam and Dean are.

Too wobbly on the inside to continue, Jack retreats to his room. He must retreat to his room for too long of a time to appear correct, because once he’s slept and then awoken again several times and is beginning to feel really quite hungry, someone knocks softly on Jack’s door, so softly that he almost doesn’t hear it. “Hello,” Jack says to the door. The door opens. Behind the door stands Sam, who is balancing a tray full of sandwiches in one of his hands, and who, as usual, is frowning.

“Thought you might be hungry,” says Sam, tensing his shoulders and screwing up his face in the way Jack has come to learn means that Sam wants to help you feel better, or maybe just that Sam wants you to do something for him: Jack still can’t really tell the difference between the two intentions.

“You think that I am… that something is wrong with me,” Jack says slowly, parsing it through: surely both possible meanings would stem from this same assumption that Sam must be making.

Sam gives Jack the same curve of his mouth—one corner up and the other down—as Castiel did the last time Jack left this room. He doesn’t like it, he decides—too ambiguous—not quite a smile but not quite a frown, either, and where does that leave Jack? “I just—I thought you’d be excited to spend time with Cas—to meet him, see him _alive_. Are you sure you don’t know… I mean, can you remember doing _anything_ that might have been what brought him back?”

Another thing that Jack doesn’t like is all of Sam’s questions, which unilaterally make the upside-down feeling inside of Jack grow worse. He scrunches his forehead and closes his eyes. “I remember feeling… bad— _guilty_. I said his name—‘Castiel’—and a… kind of _pulse_ went through me: I felt it leave my body through my fingertips. I don’t know anything more. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Jack,” says Sam, even though Jack thinks it really isn’t okay with him, that he’s failed Sam’s question, again. “But, you know, if it _was_ you, then—thank you.”

The statement sounds suspiciously like a lie, and Jack looks up into Sam’s eyes as he finally reaches for the tray Sam has set on Jack’s bed to helps himself to a sandwich. “Why?”

Sam narrows his eyebrows and frowns deeper. “You saved Cas’s life. He’s our best friend.”

“I thought you said that Castiel is _Dean’s_ best friend.”

“He is—I mean, he’s both our best friend. Some people have more than one best friend.”

“Yes, but…” The more Sam tells him, the less Jack feels that he understands about the world and about his and his family’s places in it, and it makes him feel _frustrated_ on the inside. He shakes his head back and forth a few times, but the confusion doesn’t clear away. “You said—in Dr. Vallens’s office, you said—you and Dean have the same mother, but it was always Dean that she went to when she wanted to talk. Do you mean that Castiel is best friends with you both the same way Mary is both your mother?”

He takes a bite of his sandwich, swallows it, and realizes that Sam hasn’t answered his question. Jack looks up again. “I am sorry,” he says, even though he’s not, exactly—he just wants to understand. “I’ve offended you.”

“No, it’s… I should never have said those things to Dean in front of you. It’s between me and Dean—I shouldn’t have worried you with it.”

But Jack isn’t worried, and Sam still isn’t giving him any adequate answers. “Aren’t _you_ happy that Castiel is back with you?” he presses on.

“I am. I _am_. I’m glad he’s back, and… I’m grateful.”

But something about the cadence of Sam’s voice sounds like a lie, and he and Dean _said_ that the rule is they’re not _supposed_ to lie. Inside his chest, Jack feels a little swell of heat. “But you look at them the way they look at each other,” he says. Carefully, Jack studies the way Sam’s eyes round and his mouth slackens, and he continues, “You can tell me, you know: I would understand. You look at Dean and Castiel the same way I look at you and Dean.”

He polishes off the sandwich and is just starting on a second one when Sam backs hastily out of the room. Jack feels—he feels less wobbly than he had before Sam’s visit, but more of the _guilty_ feeling—somehow still overall _worse_ —and he wonders how many more of Sam’s books he’ll need to read in order to learn how to squash it.


End file.
